Guy Livingstone; or, 'Thorough'

by George A. Lawrence

You will rarely find the sternest or wisest of men disposed to be harsh toward errors that spring from a devotion to themselves. It is only just, as well as natural, that it should be so. If the second cause of the crime did not find an excuse for the defendant, I don't know where he or she would look for an advocate. St. Kevin need not have troubled himself: there were plenty of people ready to push poor Kathleen down. I think it is a pity they canonized him.

Through all Guy's reflections there ran this under-current—"how easily all might have been avoided if the slightest things had turned out differently." Just so, after a heavy loss at play, a man will keep thinking how he might have won a large stake if he had played one card otherwise, or backed the In instead of the Out. I have heard good judges say that this pertinacious after-thought is the hardest part to bear of all the annoyance. Of course he worries himself about it, just as if "great results from small beginnings" were not the tritest of all truisms. I don't wish to be historical, or I would reflect how often the Continent has been convulsed by a dish that disagreed with some one, or by a ship that did not start to its time. The Jacobites were very wise in toasting "the little gentleman in black velvet" that raised the fatal mole-hill. Does not the old romance say that an adder starting from a bush brought on the terrible battle in which all the chivalry of England were strewn like leaves around Arthur on Barren Down?

Guy could still hardly realize to himself the certainty of Constance's approaching death. He tried to fix his thoughts on this till a heavy, listless torpor, like drowsiness, began to steal over him. He roused himself impatiently, and began to think how slow they were going. Nevertheless, the green coteaux that swell between Rouen and the sea were flying past rapidly, and they arrived at Havre, as Mohun had said, just in time to catch the Southampton packet.

There was threatening of foul weather to windward. The clouds, in masses of indigo just edged with copper, were banking up fast, and the "white horses," more and more frequent, were beginning to toss their manes against the dark sky-line.

To the few travelers whom the stern necessities of business drove forth, lingering and shivering, from their comfortable inns on to the deck, already wet and unsteady, Livingstone was an object of great interest and many theories. His impatience to be gone was so marked that the conscientious official looked more than once suspiciously at his passport.

Mr. Phineas Hackett, of Boston, U.S., Marchand (so self-described in the Livre des Voyageurs at Chamounix), made up his mind that he saw before him the hero of some gigantic forgery, or a fraudulent bankrupt on a large scale; but, just as he had fixed on the astute question which was to drive the first wedge into the mystery, Guy turned in his quick walk and met him full. I doubt if he even saw the smooth-shaven, eager face at his elbow; but he was thinking again of the lost letter, and the savage glare in his eyes made the heart of the "earnest inquirer" quiver under his black satin waistcoat. "D——d hard knot, that," he muttered, disconsolately, and retreated with great loss, to writhe during the rest of the passage in an orgasm of unsatisfied curiosity.

The weather looked worse every moment as the wild north wind came roaring from seaward with a challenge to the vessels that lay tossing within the jetty to come forth and meet him. The waste-pipe of the Sea-gull screamed out shrilly in answer; and the brave old ship, shaking the foam from her bows after every plunge, as her namesake might do from its breast-feathers, steamed out right in the teeth of the gale.

A regular "Channel night"—a night which Mr. Augustus Winder, Paris traveler to H—— and Co., the mighty mercers of Regent Street, spoke of in after days with a shudder of reminiscence mingling with the pride of one who has endured and survived great peril; who has gone down to the sea in ships, and seen the wonders of the deep. His associates—the élite of the silk-and-ribbon department—youths of polished manners and fascinating address, than whom non alii leviore saltu took the counter in their stride—would gather round the narrator in respectful admiration, just as the young sea-dogs of Nantucket might listen to a veteran hunter of the sperm whale as he tells of a hurricane that caught him in the strait between the Land of Fire and terrible Cape Horn.

Mr. Winder represented himself as having assisted all on board, from the captain down to the cabin-boy, with his counsel and encouragement, and as having been materially useful to the man at the wheel. The fact was, that he cried a good deal during the night, and was incessant in his appeals to the steward and Heaven for help. In his appeals to the latter power he employed often a strangely modified form of the Apostles' Creed; for his religious education had been neglected, and this was his solitary and simple idea of an orison. However, no one was present to detract from his triumph or to controvert his concluding words:

"An awful night, gents; but duty's duty, and the firm behaved handsome. Mr. Sassnett, I'll trouble you for a light, sir." And so he ignited a fuller-flavored Cuba, and drank, in a sweeter grog, "Our noble selves"—olim hæc meminisse juvabit.